A General Service Unit (GSU) officer is the latest victim of illegal SIM card registration fraudsters. He made this discovery after visiting a local telco attendant shop in Wajir seeking to register a second SIM card.
The attendant cautioned him that nine other SIM cards had been registered under his name as he was being offered the service.
“I wanted to register another line, I went to their shop in Wajir and that's where I realized that my ID had been used to register the other nine lines which I knew nothing about.” The police constable stated according to the Standard.
He stated that he lost his national identification card (ID) back in 2019 and that could be where the fraudsters got his details from.
The officer stated that the telco informed him that it was working to deregister all of the nine illegal accounts registered to him.
However, he expressed worries about the number of organized criminal activities that the SIM cards could have already transacted over the period.
He advised telcos in Kenya to send notifications to their clients once a new SIM card is registered under their details.
There has been an increase in the number of SIM card fraud as the police apprehended 6 suspects in Kasarani on March 8, 2021.
According to sleuths from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), they were nabbed following an arrest in Embu. The suspect in Embu directed the officers to his criminal counterparts in Kasarani hence confirming the SIM card criminal syndicate.
“We tracked down the money to Embu where the suspects were diverting it and after apprehension, the suspect led us to Lumumba Drive in Kasarani where we managed to nab the five,” said the Kasarani Sub-County Police Commander (SCPC) Muthuri Mwongera.
Kenyans have been cautioned by telcos to report cases of lost IDs to the police and also to check their statuses with their respective service providers.
